I am only half an episode in but I see that we are, uhhhhh

being VERY generous to Phyllis Schlafly

Is Cate fantastic, yes, is Slattery the only actor you should even bother looking at for roles like this, also yes, did those opening credits absolutely give me my life, of course, but “the people who want to take away your rights are people too!!!” is my LEAST favorite genre

I’m willing to let some of this go if they stick the landing and it becomes a supervillain origin story, but if The Moral of the Story ends up being “women have so much in common on both sides of the aisle!” I will flip a table

also the scene at the salon felt like a REACH, like these nice moms who only oppose the ERA because they’re so scared their baby girls will get drafted

WHEN DO WE START TALKING ABOUT PRIVILEGE

oh Jesus is Cyclops gonna try to fuck her

okay so I’m mixed on this scene where she gives the D.A.R. speech (my brain, immediately: “it’s the Francis Scott Key . . . Key?”) but I THINK I like it

she’s soaking up the attention and getting crueler minute by minute and we watch her single sister-in-law slowly realize that either this is what Phyllis really thinks about unmarried women or at the very least that she’s going to KEEP SAYING that it is bc she craves the applause

SHIRLEY CHISHOLM FOR LIFE

Margo Martindale just barreled onto my screen in a huge floppy hat and god I love that woman with my entire heart, she should be in everything

it should be a law

no one should ever be forced to watch anything that doesn’t have Margo Martindale in it

can the whole show just be every great character actress in Hollywood sitting around in a room shit-talking Nixon

They’re playing the Mama Cass song from “Lost” and I have a Pavlovian response to it now

WHERE IS DESMOND

YASSSSSSS episode 2 is called “Gloria”

okay we gettin out of her POV now this will be good

MISS NIECY IS IN THIS???????????

Rose Byrne as Gloria Steinem: “I don’t want people to listen to me because I’m just a pretty face.”

Margo Martindale as Bella Abzug: “I would love it if people listened to me because I had a pretty face. Then I wouldn’t have to shout.”

THIS IS THE SHOW I WANT

it is WILD to watch this upbeat joyful “Women Get Shit Done!!!” montage set to “Let the Sun Shine In,” full of delightful character actresses and laughter and celebration, when the thing they’re heroically trying to do is ...... to stop other women from having rights????

Melanie Lynskey just announced that THEY DID IT, they got an invite to go on Donahue, and it is presented as an UNRESERVEDLY triumphant moment for this team of Hardworking Moms Defying the Odds and I just ..... what??

and if you’re wondering if ANY attention is paid by the camera - and therefore, the narrative - to the Black maid serving all the busy hardworking mom crusaders coffee, I will save you the wondering, for there is not! She just cruises in and out of frame and gets thanked and goes

I think I just still don’t know yet what this show is trying to BE? At times it feels like it wants to just be entirely a sympathetic Schlafly biopic but they felt weird about that and decided they had to add in the left too, but that by necessity makes it feel bothsidesy